Matryoshka
by Mrs. Muddlewait
Summary: When you pull apart the carved wooden woman, there's a smaller woman of the same sort inside, waiting to be pulled apart in turn. It's much like that with Max and the little sisters she never knew that Manticore had given her.
1. X6 452, 2009

February 2009

X6-452 knew the big hallway that went from the barracks to the mess to the training rooms. There were windows with straight lines in them, and the straight lines made shadows on the wall and the floor when the sunlight came in. Sometimes the shadows were crooked and slanted, but other times the lines they made were exactly straight. That was in the middle of the day, when the X6s stood outside the mess hall at attention. When she was very, very little, she had thought the sunlight and shadows were standing at attention too. She knew better now, but she still liked to see the sunlight line up in formation on the tile floor.

This morning there was a different hallway. Her boots made only very small sounds. Step. Step. Step. There were no other boots. There were no other soldiers. No one on her left, on her right, in front, or behind. There was only the man in the white coat, who was not the Infirmary man.

He had come to the barracks while the X6s stood for morning inspection. X6-452 knew better than to look at him. She kept her eyes straight and her back straight and she didn't move her hands once she was sure that they were lined up with the seams of her pants the way they were supposed to be.

The bunk was always the hardest part. When she was punished, that was why. She held her breath while the Instructor looked at her blanket, her sheets. She wanted to watch his face. She wanted to squeeze her hands together. Suddenly she was sure that she needed to go to the latrine.

The Instructor nodded and moved on.

X6-452 breathed out.

But then after inspection, the Instructor had told her to wait even though she wasn't on the punishment list. Then he sent her away alone with the man who was not the Infirmary man, down a hallway she didn't know.

The man was very, very tall. Each of his paces was two of hers. That made it easy to walk with him. Double time, and then her footsteps and his were together. Even though the shoes he wore made only barefoot kinds of noises, knowing she was in step with someone made her feel braver.

You had to be brave in Unfamiliar Territory.

Unfamiliar Territory was a place you didn't know. Before, she always thought that it was the name of a place. This is the barracks. This is the obstacle course. This is the firing range. And that, over there, is the Unfamiliar Territory. She thought it had something to do with trees. In Unfamiliar Territory, it was important to communicate with your unit. Otherwise you wouldn't know where the Enemy was.

On the course the Enemy was an instructor whose gun was loaded with hard pellets of paint that bruised and stung and meant you failed in your duty and you were Dead. At the firing range the Enemy was the outline of a man drawn on a piece of paper. She didn't know what the Enemy would be like in Unfamiliar Territory. That was the sort of thing that Commanding Officers knew. Maybe X6-787 had recognized the not-Infirmary man. He wouldn't have let the Enemy just march her away down the hall. Even if the Instructor was watching. At least she didn't think he would.

Maybe the others were coming later, behind her. She wanted to look back. She didn't hear them. Just machine noises in an empty hallway.

She was listening so hard she missed a step. The tall man slowed down. She tried again to match her pace to his, two to one, but he slowed down again. And again. She missed step after step after that; it sounded wrong and it felt wrong. The man looked down at her and frowned, and that was relief. There would be a hard hand on her shoulder and he would call her _soldier_ and make her do it right so that everything lined up again. Instead he stood still for a moment, and then he smiled.

No one had ever told him how to stand up straight and answer like a soldier. "You don't have to run," he said. "I'm sorry." She didn't know whether the right answer was _yes sir_ or _no sir_, and his voice was too quiet, like his shoes. She wanted very badly to be in the hallway she knew where the sunlight lined up.

"Besides," he said. "We're almost there."

_There _was a not-Infirmary room. Some of the people wore white coats, but they weren't the Infirmary people. There were too many of them. There was supposed to be one officer, one instructor, one very tall person who didn't have a uniform and then a whole row of soldiers. In Unfamiliar Territory things are backwards.

A woman with a fuzzy blue shirt bent down low to look X6-452 in the eye. "What's your designation?"

"X6-452. Ma'am," she said. _Maybe not entirely backwards_, she thought with relief.

There was a chair in the room. It was more like the outline of a chair, all straps and buckles and hinged metal bits. It was very large. The people in the white coats looked at the chair, and then at X6-452, whose chin was almost level with the armrests.

"Hrm," said the tall man who had brought her there. Then he spoke softly to the other people. The look on his face meant that he didn't know that X6-452 could hear him. "This is what I've been talking about," he said. "That prototype won't even fit in the chair. _Re_indoctrination? She's hardly been indoctrinated in the _first_ place. Neuropsych hasn't even approved the plan, but we're rushing in anyway? It's ridiculous."

X6-452 knew _indoctrination_. That was the room where you sat at attention and read the words on the wall while the Instructor talked. _Duty. Discipline. Mission. Objective._ There weren't any words on this wall, except for _Authorized Personnel Only_ and those weren't Indoctrination words. And the whole unit went to Indoctrination together. Not alone in the wrong room with the wrong people. Unfamiliar Territory.

She would be braver if one more X6 was here.

"Renfro's approved it. She _ordered _it, Leo" said the fuzzy-shirted woman. If we push back, she'll be mad as hell. We don't have to go deeply – all Renfro wants is some kind of PsyOps report so she can tell the committee she took 'immediate action.' We start lightly, move slowly, and get the Director what she wants. It's not that risky. It won't be that bad."

X6-452 knew the word PsyOps. It meant something bad, but she didn't know what. It was something X5s were afraid of. Sometimes the instructors took them there instead of Isolation if they did something wrong. X6s only went to Isolation. That was a little gray room, not a big white one that was Not the Infirmary. It wasn't Unfamiliar Territory. And if you were being punished they always told you why. Maybe her bunk wasn't right this morning after all.

The woman and the man finished talking to each other. The fuzzy-shirt woman stood by a scale in the corner. That was an Infirmary thing, a scale. "Come over here," she said, "and we'll see how big you are."

Her voice went up on the end, as if it was a question. X6-452 knew the answer. The Infirmary man charted those things all the time. "This soldier measures ninety-eight centimeters and weighs sixteen kilograms, ma'am."

The woman looked startled. She hadn't expected an answer. Now maybe they would take X6-452 away from the not-the-Infirmary room and back to the barracks for her punishment. Or Isolation. In this place that thought wasn't frightening.

"Sixteen kilograms," the woman said. She breathed out, hard. She looked at a table of Infirmary things, and she took something small and round out of a paper cup. "Have you ever swallowed medicine like this before?"

"No, ma'am," said X6-452.

"That's all right. We'll just do this the easy way."

The woman took a little plastic cup from the table. It was full of something squishy and yellow that X6-452 didn't recognize. She broke the medicine into little bits and put the crumbs in a spoonful of the yellow stuff. "Open your mouth," she ordered.

X6-452 obeyed. The yellow stuff was sweet and wet and it tasted a little like medicine and a lot like fruit. There was a lot of yellow stuff left in the cup. She wished that when the PsyOps part was over they would let her eat the rest of it.

The woman patted the seat of the chair. "Now I want you to come sit up here," the woman said.

X6-452 felt a little dizzy, the way she had when she fell off the wall in the obstacle course and hit her head. Her feet wobbled. She climbed up in the chair the way they told her. Her head just reached the back of it, where a grownup's shoulders were supposed to go. There was a framework of metal things just above her head. This was definitely Unfamiliar Territory. She didn't like it.

The tall man shook his head. "Does anyone know where the phone books are? That's what we need."

"That's not funny," the fuzzy-shirted woman said. "Hop down," she said.

X6-452 obeyed instantly. She was glad to be away from the chair.

Somebody put a tall hard cushion on the seat of the chair, the way they did when they clipped your hair off. "And come back up now," the woman said.

X6-452 tried to climb up but her feet slipped and her head spun. She was going to fall. She tried to catch herself. She didn't mean to disobey. The tall man caught her under the armpits and lifted her up. He smiled. "Good girl."

She didn't know why he said _good girl_ when he was making her sit in the PsyOps chair. Backwards again. They pulled straps over her shoulders and around her chest. They had trouble pulling them tight enough. One man took her arm and taped it down. That much was like the Infirmary, at least. That was for needles.

One of the metal things overhead had a shiny red light. She saw her reflection in the edge of a glass cabinet; the red light made a dot on her forehead. She knew red dots. It made no sense. He'd called her _good girl_. She couldn't move. They could kill her fast with a needle. Instead they were going to shoot her. She didn't need to be in a chair for that. It didn't make sense at all. Everything was crooked and backwards and it would never line up straight again.

Her eyes felt hot and her mouth shook. That was called _losing military bearing_ and you were never supposed to do it. Maybe that wouldn't matter in the PsyOps chair. Now she was absolutely certain that she needed to go to the latrine. A needle bit deep into her arm.

The fuzzy-shirt woman was standing over her. She brushed a hand across X6-452's cheek where her eyes burned. She made a sort of hissing noise. "Shh," she said. "You'll be all right. It'll be over soon." She looked away to talk to someone else. "Bring the imager down a little."

"That's as far as it goes. I'll try raising her head," said the tall man. Cool hands put a wadded towel under her neck. For some reason the hands moved gently over the fuzz of her hair. "Try it now."

X6-452 squeezed her eyes shut.

"Eyes open," the fuzzy-shirt woman said. "That's it." She lowered the metal framework until something cold touched X6-452's cheek, right under where the bright red light shone into her eye.

"Open your mouth," she said. But it wasn't more of the yellow stuff. It was something squishy for biting on, like when the X6s sparred and actually hit each other. She tried to raise her arm to block but neither arm moved because of the tape. But she didn't need to. The woman only patted her shoulder gently and moved away.

"Well," she said, and she breathed out hard. "I suppose we're ready."

X6-452 heard a door open. There was a clack of shoes and a yellow-haired woman came in. She stood close to the chair. Her eyes were very large and edged with something black. She smiled, but it was different from the other people's smiles.

"Listen carefully and obey orders and this won't hurt much," she said. Maybe, thought X6-452, this was the Enemy. In Unfamiliar Territory, how could you tell?

The woman stepped back then. "Go ahead," she said to the man. "Let's find out whether this little apple fell far enough from the rotten tree."

So Unfamiliar Territory did have something to do with trees. That was good to know.


	2. Interlude 1: The First Empty Space

February 2009

The phone was ringing.

The sound penetrated the odd dream Adriana was having. Suddenly she was transported out of the outdoor supermarket that was also her high school and into the on-call room on the Neurology floor at Johns Hopkins. On call? She opens one eye. Was the ringing part of the dream, or wasn't it?

It wasn't. It wasn't the phone on the bedside table. It was the mobile phone, which was nowhere within arm's reach. That number was supposed to be for emergencies. But Adriana wasn't handling emergencies these days. She'd spent every waking moment of the past few months on the X7 project, that and finally pulling together the huge masses of data that had come out of the osteoregeneration study. _Even at Manticore there's no_ _such thing as a data-analysis emergency_. It had to be Renfro again, calling from Seattle in another power move to demonstrate how many people she had at her beck and call. _Watch this, Congressman. I'll say "frog" in the middle of the night – now look at them jump!_

The ringing stopped. Voice mail had picked it up. _Good_, thought Adriana. _Buys_ _me time for a cup of coffee before I call her back. _She groped for her glasses. They were in her bed, on top of the current issue of _Human Molecular Genetics_. She'd been reading when she fell asleep. _Maybe _more_ than every waking moment._ The journal, which did not belong to her, was now creased down the middle where she'd rolled over on it. The ringing started again.

Evidently voice mail wasn' t good enough for Renfro, or whoever else would call at … three-oh-God in the morning. She blinked wearily. Where _was_ the phone anyway? _Jacket pocket, maybe? It can't be downstairs; the ringing is too loud for that._ There was a pile of work stuff on the dresser – ID, passcard, three different digital doodads for getting through secure doors. The phone wasn't with them. Finally she tracked the sound to the pocket of the wool slacks she'd worn yesterday.

She fumbled it open. "This is Dr. Vertes," she yawned.

"Adriana?" It wasn't Renfro. It was Deck. _At three in the morning, it's got to be personal, and he's got to be drunk. Dammit. _She'd rather have Renfro and a data-analysis emergency.

This was his command voice, though, stern and clear, and it snapped her awake like strong coffee. "You need to get in here _now_. There's been an are casualties, and the project… I'll brief you when you get here. Which is ASAP. Understand?"

"I'm coming," she started to say, but he'd already hung up.

She was halfway dressed before she even put down the phone. Yesterday's slacks, yesterday's blouse, and the first shoes she could find. She filled her pockets – phone, car keys, the tangled lanyard of ID and dangling security bits.

Her coat should have been on the hook in the hall, but it wasn't. Crick, Watson, and Franklin had pulled it down to sleep on. She picked it up. As soon as the cats tumbled off, they started meowing. Of course. If Adriana was up, it was time for breakfast. She poured a pile of cat food in the general direction of their dish. She paused. Middle-of-the-night incidents could last for days. She kept pouring until the dish overflowed and the bag was empty.

Outside the night was bitter cold, and it was snowing. Miraculously, her third-hand SUV started almost at once.

_Incident_. _Casualties_. _The Project_. She considered the road, weighed speed against ice, and stepped on the gas.

Three of the X5s had been wounded and recaptured.

She knew their resilience was astonishing. Under controlled experimental conditions, out of eight subjects who sustained gunshot wounds to the extremities, seven maintained operational effectiveness (as determined by study criteria) of ≥80% throughout the following 120 minutes.

That was why Deck's men had aimed for the center of mass. Nothing less would have stopped X5s.

Out of three nine-year-old children wounded as they ran for the fence, two had been ripped open by automatic rifle fire. Thoracic cavity, abdominal cavity, spinal column – all reduced to a nearly indistinguishable tangle of shattered bone and shredded meat.

And yet they would probably recover.

The surgery had taken more than fourteen hours.

Until she scrubbed out, Adriana hadn't realized the depth of her exhaustion. The muscles in her neck and shoulders burned. Her tongue was fuzzy with thirst. Her hands had only a few minutes of supple steadiness left in them before the cramps and the aches began.

Werner was just as tired and there was still one more wounded X5.

They looked at the films together. Transverse diaphysial fracture of the tibia and fibula. It was a simple fracture; X5 bones snapped but rarely splintered. She'd worked on that design. "It's a skeletal injury," Werner said unnecessarily. _Bones are your department_.

Adriana's eyes slid heavily shut in a long, long blink.

"For your study," said Werner. "It could be valuable."

Setting a fracture would be less work than arguing with Werner. Besides, he might be right. _Another data point_. "Fine," she said. "I'll do it."

Two of Deck's men, and one of the instructors, guarded the boy who lay on the gurney in restraints – not padded hospital straps, but the heavy shackles they used in the basement. Steel rings and chains and cables covered him like a net. From the metal guard over his mouth, she assumed he'd bitten someone. Under each bit of steel there was a darkening bruise, like a shadow. He'd fought hard. His right leg, swollen and dark, bent between the knee and ankle the same awkward angle she'd seen on the films. There was a shackle around that ankle too.

The guards unlocked it, and the boy winced silently in pain.

"It's a simple fracture, she said. "In an X5, that's a fairly minor injury. We'll start an IV so we can medicate him, then I'll be able to reduce the fracture and get a cast on. He'll be fit for duty in a week or two."

The instructor scowled.

"Physically, I mean. Neuropsych isn't my department."

"And the medication?"

"We'll need to sedate him. It's going to be a painful procedure."

"It's going to be a learning experience. Besides, we can't risk interactions. He's going straight to PsyOps from here."

"I'd rather have him sedated and keep him in the infirmary overnight," she said. The instructor glared at her. X5s were resilient; the pain would probably be minimal. "But he's your responsibility. I understand."

When she set the bones the boy clenched his fists and made no sound. She applied the cast with the ease of long practice; she worked quickly – you had to with fiberglass bandages – but it still seemed to take forever. She couldn't help yawning.

Finally the cast was on and the boy's leg was propped on a pillow on the gurney. The guards started adjusting the ankle shackle so that they could fasten it over the cast. "Don't do that," she told them. "Give it twenty minutes to dry." She'd be happier if they'd let him rest before taking him to PsyOps.

She'd get her way if she pushed, but pushing took energy and this was no time to interfere in the X5 program. After tonight, the X5s were a problem, a horrible problem. Right now they were someone else's horrible problem, and the smart thing to do was to stay as far away as possible.

She'd still feel better if they got some pain meds into him.

She blinked again. It took half an hour. She heard the guards leave with their gurney and their prisoner but when she opened her eyes again, there were still two little boys waiting in the infirmary._Oh, damn. It can't be time for sick call yet, can it? _No, it was night. Maybe an hour till lights-out in the barracks. Maybe less.

"X5-598 and X6-599 reporting as ordered, ma'am," said the older one.

The little one barely reached the X5's shoulder. He stood at attention and tried to conceal a yawn. The solemnity of his sleepy, serious face was paradoxically funny. Adriana tried not to smile.

"At ease," she told them. "Tell me about your orders, X5-598."

"Director Renfro ordered us to report to Dr. Stultzman, ma'am."

Renfro was in town; these two were Werner's patients. _Oh, crap, and thank God, respectively_. She'd go wake up Werner, and then at last she could shower and nap and eat with a clean conscience.

Five minutes under the shower in the locker room. Fifteen minutes with her head down on the table. Peanut-butter crackers from the vending machine. No drink machine on this floor, but in the fridge were four cans of Mountain Dew marked with someone else's initials. Adriana took them all and replaced them with an anonymous, illegible apology scrawled on a five-dollar bill. Three packages of crackers, then one can after another until her stomach stopped growling and her eyes stayed open. She'd sit with the two X5s in recovery until the meeting started.

The architects of Manticore had never anticipated a top-secret meeting involving thirty-two people. They were using the biggest conference room in the high-security area; even so, only the highest-ranking and the earliest arrivals had any chance at a chair.

Lydecker had one at the far end of the table. Even though his attention seemed focused on the papers in front of him, Adriana turned slightly aside to avoid his gaze.

The people who couldn't find chairs stood, if they were military. The civilian researchers mostly perched on the wide benchlike radiator. Oh, there was Leopold, near the corner. He moved over to make room for her. His breath smelled like coffee, like everyone's; like everyone's, his face was hollow and gray.

"How've you been?" she asked quietly.

He answered just as quietly. "Eight evaluation-and-reindoctrination sessions. You?"

"Fourteen hours in trauma surgery," she said. "So they brought you in from Seattle?"

He nodded toward the table. "I flew in with Renfro this morning."

Adriana hadn't even realized Renfro was in the room. She looked again at the people who sat around the table. The woman next to Lydecker was Renfro, all right, almost unrecognizeable with limp hair and no makeup and a sweatshirt that she must have borrowed from military supply. So now even the director was exhausted and without armor. Her bare face was like a signal flag: the situation had moved from _incident_ through _emergency_ to _catastrophe_.

Renfro knocked on the table. "All _right_," she snapped. "Let's talk about the current status."

Everyone looked at Lydecker. He cleared his throat twice. "Of the 25 X5s in unit two, 24 were involved in the … incident. Of those, nine have been recovered. Seven had minimal or minor injuries; two were seriously wounded. Three are dead." He stumbled over the words. From his voice Adriana couldn't tell tell whether he was drunk or just exhausted.

"The recaptured X5s are scheduled with the highest possible priority for immediate debriefing and reindoctrination in PsyOps. The X5 who remained in the barracks during the incident has been transferred to Isolation."

Renfro made a show of counting on her fingers. "And so we've lost…?"

Lydecker took a long drink of something from his steel mug. Whatever was in there wasn't coffee, not the way he gulped it_. It's already a catastrophe. It's _his_ catastrophe. And now he's drunk__**. **__What's _beyond_ catastrophe? _

Deck's voice had thickened perceptibly; he was almost mumbling. "Twelve."

"Twelve." Renfro repeated. Throughout the room people winced, sighed, rubbed the bridge of their noses. Some people muttered. Adriana didn't recognize the uniformed Army captain who was silently mouthing the words _holy living shit_.

"So the first priority is still the recovery effort," Renfro said. Her face was pale and lined, but the chilling insincere smile was as intimidating as ever. "After that, let's be sure none of the others follow those twelve over the fence. Neuropsych?"

Leopold stood up. He had index cards. "Director, Seattle PsyOps has run the Response-to-Indoctrination evaluation on eight prototypes who share the genome of the Gillette escapees. Since some of the genesets involved were iterated into the X6 series, we evaluated both X5 and X6 subjects. We interpreted the X6 results conservatively; the RtI evaluation was developed for subjects greater than five years of age, while the X6s we examined ranged in age from 39 to 51 months. Even with conservative interpretation, the evaluations of all subjects did confirm internalization of Manticore directives within currently acceptable limits."

Adriana realized she'd been holding her breath. She let it out now. Everyone from Genetics and Physiology did. _If the siblings test acceptably, that's evidence that it's not genetic. Either that, or the tests don't work. _That second possibility didn't seem to bother Leo; his expression was one of utter relief.

"Physiology?"

Adriana looked at Werner. Werner looked back at her with a stolid stubborn expression. _Relief doesn't last long in one of these meetings_, she thought, and she stood up.

"At the present time our response has been focused on trauma care to preserve the effectiveness of the wounded prototypes returned by perimeter security. Dr. Stutzman and I treated the two major trauma cases; both are currently in stable but serious condition. The remaining seven injured prototypes were treated and released to the Operations branch."

She wasn't sure about Werner's last two patients; routine clearance for PsyOps, probably. Unrelated, like that X4 with food poisoning that someone had hauled into the middle of the tense bloody emergency mess. There was something to be said there about triage and priority and staffing and dietary hygiene. In her fatigue Adriana started to say some of it before she realized what she was doing, cut herself off in mid-sentence, and sat down. Leo had been smart to bring index cards.

"Questions?" said Renfro.

A woman in a lab coat raised her hand. Adriana didn't recogize her face, but she knew the voice from ndless conference calls – she was the leader of the Genetics team in Seattle. "Have any decisions been made about the implications of this… this _incident…_for the X7 program? Given that the data we have seems to point to an environmental cause – "

A man in black fatigues interrupted. He had a heavy gauze dressing over his right ear. "Data? What data? You don't have data. You have eight PsyOps reports, and Dr. Pacen just said that some of them –what, half? Half of them might not even be accurate. And on the strength of that data you're going to go ahead and knock up a batch of surrogates with the clones of those evil little fu – excuse me, Director – those _flawed prototypes_ – who killed eleven people on their way out of here?"

An astonishgly young scientist in a Cal Tech T-shirt was up on her feet in an instant. "And how many of those _flawed prototypes_ came out of Unit One? Zero. They all started out in the same place ten years ago, and now twenty-two Unit One prototypes are asleep in their barracks and twelve Unit Two prototypes are halfway to Montana. Occam's Razor. It's environment."

"You bet it's environment," shouted someone else. "It's a training problem. It was obvious. It's been obvious since last year, when they were climbing all over the goddamn roof. _Those_ are the PsyOps reports we ought to be looking at. That and the disciplinary report, if you can get it before Don Lydecker buries it in a drawer somewhere."

In the middle of the shouting, Deck's voice was a low and dangerous growl. "Don't you dare accuse me of…"

"Enough." Renfro slammed her hand down on the table. "Enough. The X7 schedule – where are we?"

The Seattle genetics woman answered. "Scheduled to move the first ten embryos to _in vivo_ gestation by the 14th, Director."

"How many of those embryos are further iterations of any of the genotypes we're discussing?"

"Two." She fumbled with her papers. "That would be … X7-452 and X7-471."

"What's the impact of waiting – say, two, three months?"

The genetics lead looked up and off to the left, as if staring at calculations on an invisible blackboard. "Time… we'd end up behind schedule by… six months. No more than seven. Budget – hard to tell. Rough, rough guess, maybe eleven million."

"Then continue on schedule," said Renfro. "We're done. We'll regroup tomorrow morning, six-thirty. For now, go get some rest, get some food, get whatever will keep you from resorting to violence in the middle of a staff meeting. Oh… Deck? I'd like to talk to you for a minute…"

Werner caught Adriana in the hall. "Were you going to do any of the post-mortem?"

"The three X5s they brought back? I don't know." It might be valuable. She had more than enough data already. She had to get some rest. She shouldn't waste the opportunity. "Maybe." At the very least she'd go down and talk to pathology.

Pathology was busy; the tech on duty had looked at Adriana's badge and waved her into the pale gray room with the steel tables. She'd expected three little bodies, not six.

She recognized the three that Deck's men had brought back. On the next table, though, there was another; this one was female. Adriana knew what had happened in the Unit Two barracks, but somehow she hadn't expected to see the little girl who had seized the gun and started it all. From the eyebrows down her face was perfect. Peaceful, Adriana wanted to think, but it wasn't. It was fierce. Adriana thought of the silent little boy with the bruises under his chains. This one had fought hard too. She'd died angry. That seemed right for an X5, somehow.

There were two more. Adriana's stomach knotted. She hoped the larger one wasn't the X5 with the broken leg. Or the X4 she'd thrown out of the infirmary; she told him to go vomit elsewhere because they needed the space. He hadn't seemed that sick.

It wasn't. It was X5-598. Not a mark on him, except the IV needle still taped to the back of his hand. The other was the X6, a copy in miniature in every detail. Adriana was ashamed that she'd ever laughed at his solemn, serious eyes. Their faces had none of the girl's rage, just stillness. Of course. They'd come just before lights-out. They'd been tired. They would have been happy to rest on the clean white cot with the soft pillow to give blood samples or be vaccinated or whatever they'd been told they were doing.

She had no intention of dissecting either of them. _Any_ of them.

Instead she had every intention of leaving. She had to do it now.

Otherwise, she'd never be able to make it through the meeting in the morning.


	3. In PsyOps, 2009

_**Author's Note:**__  
This brief scene has taken more effort than the previous two chapters put together. I tried at first to incorporate it into a longer chapter, but I've finally decided to quit messing with it. Even though it's very short, it seems to work much better if it stands alone. Therefore, I'm uploading it as it is, so that I can move on with the rest of this fic (and with the rest of my life, for that matter.) _

February 2009

After a very long time the red light went off.

Even without the red light, X6-452's eyes hurt. She wanted to close them, but she couldn't. A cold metal thing was pressed against her face to hold them open. The woman with the fuzzy shirt had put it there. She'd given an order, too. X6-452 remembered now. _Eyes open_, that was it.

Then smooth gloved hands took the metal thing away. It was very hard to keep her eyes open after that. She wished that the metal thing was still there to help her obey. It would be easier that way. But following hard orders was _discipline_, and that was what good soldiers were supposed to have. If she showed them that she was a very good soldier, maybe they would let her go. She hoped they would give her new orders very soon. Her eyes hurt.

Rubbery fingers took the squishy mouthguard from between her teeth. X6-452 coughed over and over. The sound was far too loud in the big white room. She tried to stop, but she couldn't. She _wanted_ to stop. Soldiers had to have self-control. When you were big enough for real Missions you could die if you made noise. When the X6s made noise, the Instructor hit them, to make them learn.

She didn't think the PsyOps people would hit her. In PsyOps they didn't have to hit. They had the red light for that.

X6-452 wished the Instructor would come. She would stand still and silent when he slapped her. She would obey the hardest orders and she would be very very disciplined. Then he would take her back to the barracks and away from the chair and the horrible red light.

The thought of the red light made her eyes sting and her nose run.

"Here," said the tall man. He pressed a cup against X6-452's mouth. "Drink this."

The liquid was cold and sour and salty. The Instructor gave them the same stuff sometimes. That made her feel better. She drank it in little sips, imagining the training ground and the course and the forest and the hard outside sun. Drinking was harder work than she thought. Her throat hurt and her jaws ached.

"All of it," he ordered. He tilted the cup to pour the last drops into X6-452's mouth. "That's right. Good girl."

The straps loosened. The tall man put his hands under X6-452's armpits and lifted her out of the chair. All her muscles were watery and sleepy. She was sure she would fall down if he set her on her feet. She hoped he wouldn't.

He didn't. Instead shifted her in his arms so that her head was almost level with his. If she weren't so disciplined she could look him in the eye. She felt floaty and dizzy being so close to the ceiling with nothing under her feet. She put a hand on his shoulder to hold herself up. He put a hand on her back, between her shoulders, as he carried her away from the white room.

The room where he took her was just Isolation. It had gray walls and a gray floor and no red lights anywhere. There was a hard mat on the floor, and that was where the tall man set her down.

He unfolded the thin blanket and spread it out over her. He adjusted the blanket so that it covered X6-452's whole body, all the way to her chin. He brushed his hand across her forehead before he stood up.

"You're a very brave little girl," he said, very quietly. "You're doing very well. You'll be back with your unit before you know it."

He talked so quietly that his words hardly sounded like words at all. Words were sharp and hard. The tall man's voice was like a rumbling noise a long way away. It made her think of the ventilation fan in the barracks where her brothers and sisters were. It was a good sound for sleeping.

"Time to rest now," he said.

At last someone had ordered X6-452 to close her eyes. She was very, very happy to obey.


End file.
